


lucida, obscura

by Chiyume, gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Magical Artifacts, Period Typical Attitudes, The Tesseract (Marvel), There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth Than Are Dreamt of in Howard's Philosophy, What's Wrong With Bucky, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 21:21:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14723801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiyume/pseuds/Chiyume, https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: All the times he’d longed for Steve to talk to him that way, to touch him, and it had to be now. He watched as Steve got lost in a sea of men, the wave carrying him along. Below them the artillery was making its way up through the valley as the 107th, swollen with fresh replacements, tore through the Germans’ territory, preparing to pound them into oblivion. In a short time, the planes would be lighting those tanks up and turning the forest to toothpicks. Bucky looked at his hand.Maybe I’ll just evaporate, because I’m not supposed to be here. I would have ended up like all those other experiments.





	lucida, obscura

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2018, and you'll find the art it was written for embedded toward the end. There is also now a podfic available! See the link below—it's a great listen.
> 
> It was also created before Avengers: Infinity War came out, and any resemblance to some events in that movie are coincidental (and annoying).

“Buck. Hey, Bucky.” Steve’s voice drifted to him down a long, dark corridor, wispy, fuzzy around the edges: a radio playing blocks away which Bucky could barely make out. He stared at the room before him, trying to find Steve inside its golden dome and shimmering walls. “Sergeant Barnes!” Bucky’s head snapped up and he shook it, trying to clear away the image. 

The map spread out on the table had _vanished_ while he’d been looking at it, and in its place was something else entirely: a hall of gleaming gold, patterns of swirls and rays set within huge circles that ornamented its arced walls. In its center was a golden platform surrounded by glowing stairs. Behind it, an arch opened on to a black, star-filled sky, molten yellow, red, purple, and orange splashed across it like spilled, luminous paint. Standing before the wide door was a tall figure wearing a lustrous golden helmet and armor, their back to him, but it seemed as though they were turning around. As Bucky stared into the room, waiting, he was stabbed by a piercing ache that stole his breath, splitting his head open. He put his hand to his head, almost expecting his brain to be leaking out his ears, gritting his teeth through the pain. He’d thought this would stop when he’d left the scientist’s lab. Bucky glanced down, afraid to look, but the golden room was gone: in front of him was just the map of the German bunkers they’d begun the meeting with.

The fellas watched him, old friends, new friends, all suddenly apprehensive and cautious. Jim, Monty, and Frenchie didn’t know Bucky the way Dum Dum and Gabe did, hadn’t been in combat with him nor built a lifetime of trust the way Steve had, and they were understandably suspicious about his fitness. It wasn’t the first time he’d blanked out; they’d eyed him sidelong as he sometimes stared off in the distance on their way to the SSR camp, wondering just how fucked up he’d got once the guards had taken him away. They were willing to cut him some slack then, because he’d been...well, because. _How easily it could have been us, poor guy. He’s Cap’s best friend, a stand-up fella. He’ll be all right, if Cap says._ “Sorry,” Bucky said, meeting Steve’s sour gaze with an apologetic shrug, motioning for him to continue. There was no point trying to explain himself—he’d be fine, simply needed time, and he couldn’t explain the strange events that plagued him lately, anyway.

With a salty look at Bucky, Steve turned his attention back to the others, tapping the map. “The plane will drop us around here”—he circled a finger over the center of the mountain range—“and we’ll cover this area from here to here when we jump. We’ll be pretty spread out, so just keep calm and focus on making the rally point.” He directed that to the two platoons who’d be following behind Steve’s team, most of whom hadn’t made a combat jump yet or been behind the lines. “The site is fifteen miles’ march from the rendezvous. First thing we gotta do is take out those pillboxes. It’ll be rough going, I can’t lie. Once inside, we get the trucks and the tanks, and then we’ll be in the pipe.” At least it wasn’t Hydra, for a change, and just regular old Germans. Steve scanned their faces, making sure they were encouraged by his speech and not terrified. It nearly made Bucky laugh, because Steve still had no idea how inspirational that Captain America voice was. 

The poor guy had gone straight from Private to Celebrity to Captain without any training for any of it. They’d had no idea what they had in him, all along the way, except maybe his Dr. Erskine and Agent Carter, but he’d risen to the challenges of his roles every time, defied their low expectations. And now the whole world could see how strong and resourceful he was, see what Bucky’d always seen: the quiet heroism resting on his shoulders, more truthful about his nature than any cast-metal star pinned to his chest could ever be.

When they broke, Bucky headed off to organize for the flight to the Continent. He wasn’t even out of the map room when he heard Steve behind him. Of course. 

“Headache again?” Steve asked, following him out to the hall, and Bucky tried not to bristle at his tone. Steve was acting like a lousy mother hen far too frequently these days, it was grating Bucky’s nerves and they were getting touchy with each other. 

“Yeah.” Bucky stopped and turned, leaned against the wall, and stuck his hands in his pockets. There was a tremor in his left hand he didn’t want Steve to see.

“Getting worse? Maybe you should see the doc.” _For fuck’s sake._ Steve knew damn well he wasn’t seeing a doctor again, not unless he was leaking like a bucket full of holes and Steve dragged him there by his hair. Steve put his hand to the side of Bucky’s face, and _god_ —it was so warm and huge now, and Bucky felt it on his too-thin skin like heat from the sun. He wanted to cry.

“Steve, don’t.” He yanked his head away and Steve dropped his hand, the corner of his mouth tugged down. “You’re an officer now. My CO.” It wasn’t that Steve didn’t know that, but he couldn’t seem to stop thinking of himself as Bucky’s best pal: he wanted to touch him the way they’d always done, spend his free time with Bucky when he should be with his fellow officers. Or wooing that pretty Agent Carter.

“Can’t help it—I’m worried about you.” Though it went unsaid, it was obvious: he questioned Bucky’s fitness, too. After the factory escape, the blinding headaches had begun almost immediately, and you’d have thought it was Steve who suffered them. It was always harder to watch someone else go through something painful than to feel it yourself: Bucky’d had a lifetime to gain that knowledge, watching what Steve had endured. Neither of them knew what to do with the tables being turned.

“I’ll be fine on the operation. I won’t let you down.”

“Great, good to know. But that wasn’t what I was worried about.”

Bucky felt himself softening, wishing he could still pull Steve to him for comfort, but that was eight inches and a hundred pounds ago. “I think it’ll take some time, is all. Flush all that shit they put inside me out of my plumbing, then I’m good as new.” He smiled with what he hoped was reassuring resolve, patted Steve on the shoulder. “I’ll be fine.”

As he turned, Steve said, “You could take a furlough, get rest. Go home for a while.” His eyes were so damn sad.

“What, and give up all this?”

He left Steve to search for Gabe, who was working with Howard Stark to reverse engineer some of the Hydra equipment they’d confiscated in the escape, in particular some sort of code machine or radio—or maybe both—powered by those weird blue pellets. Gabe had been their radioman in Charlie Company, and he’d also proven himself to be something of an expert with ciphers, so he and Howard fiddled with the thing all the damn time in the hopes that maybe they’d find the _open sesame_ someday. 

“Something’s really eating at you, isn’t it?” Gabe said when they crossed paths in the corridor outside the laboratory. Gabe was good at figuring everyone out. It had been no different back at McCoy, or any of the other places they’d been together. Maybe it was because of the racialism directed at him—he was one of the keenest observers Bucky’d ever met, because he’d had to be to survive.

“The fellas say something to you?” Bucky asked, putting on a _disinterested, just asking because I’m the sergeant_ demeanor. It just wasn’t something he could talk about, even to Gabe or Steve. How did you explain visions so acute you couldn’t distinguish between them and reality and not get your ass thrown on a boat home? How could you confess that a part of your body had vanished as you stared at it? The grasp of death just waiting for him, blue and silent.

“How long’ve I known you? Come on.” Gabe knocked his fist on Bucky’s shoulder.

Bucky rolled his eyes, held his hands out like it was no big deal. 

“You could tell someone about what happened in there, you know,” and he offered a commiserating half smile. “Where they took you.” 

Everyone found the blue beams and pellets intriguing in a scientific way, a curious way, but Bucky’d been intimately acquainted with them and he was terrified of them, the pain and suffering they offered. The other things they gave: his increased endurance when he should have barely been able to walk out of that factory, the increased strength. Nowhere near Steve’s level, but who was, outside of Schmidt. 

And that was keeping him up nights, too: what if the power that had made Schmidt what he was could be in Bucky’s veins as well? Surely it wasn’t just the early version of Erskine’s serum which made him that way. Zola had been trying, in that terrible room, to make another copy of his boss. Bucky was the only one who’d survived. “Maybe,” Bucky said distantly, staring at his hand.

Gabe seemed to realize Bucky wasn’t planning to talk, and said, “Suit yourself.” 

Bucky found Howard in his lab, safety goggles on and dust in his hair, looking like a movie mad scientist. “You just missed your buddy,” Howard said distractedly, ruffling his hair to get the dust out of it, brushing his shoulders off. His lab coat was filthy. 

“You blow up your lab again?” Bucky asked, parking himself on the edge of a table. 

“Laugh it up, sidekick. All that stuff you’ve brought back won’t do us a speck of good if we don’t figure out how it works or what it does, and science is trial and error. Lately, emphasis on the error, but you mark my words: it’ll be science that wins this war, not you cannon fodder.” 

_I can tell you some things about what that stuff does._ Bucky looked over at the glass chamber, behind which they kept one of the energy weapons that looked sort of like a flame thrower. They’d taken most of it apart, and its long cylindrical housing built around the blue beam hung between two magnets, levitating in the air like some magician’s wand.

“What do you know so far?” Bucky asked, back to his nonchalant routine.

Howard favored him with a condescending smirk: Bucky was a non-com and he had work to do that was decidedly not this work. Bucky offered, “I saw you at the Expo in Queens, before I shipped out. I always liked science fiction stories and I saw that ‘World of Tomorrow’ stuff in the advertisement and I wanted to see what a flying car would look like.”

“If you saw it, then you know it’s not that science fiction crap,” Howard said with disdain, preparing to go back to his poking. “It worked for a few seconds, ergo: science fact.”

Bucky shrugged, but it needled him that Stark was ignoring what he wanted to say. “I read all the magazine articles I could get my hands on about some of your projects, before the war. I figure if anyone can get a handle on this Hydra stuff, it’s you.”

Turning back to face him, Howard pushed the knot of his tie up, preening just a little. Appealing to his ego apparently worked, because he was suddenly open to giving Bucky some of his time.

“I just wish I could figure out where the hell it came from,” Howard said, more to himself than to Bucky. “That vibranium in Cap’s shield... I can guess that it’s from a meteorite, something like that. A natural, scientific, observable phenomenon. But this”—and he looked at the beam through the glass the way a new father watches his infant in the nursery—“has properties and capabilities that are nothing known to science. At least yet. Same thing with that submersible from the Hydra agent. I just can’t find the key.”

“They talked about the blue stuff like it was magical.” Stark’s head snapped around and he gave Bucky a quizzical look. “I know a little German. Ma’s side.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Rogers never told us you were so interestingly layered.” Bucky held a hand out at that— _what can I tell you_. “So what did they say?”

“Didn’t make a lot of sense to me: taking the power of gods or something like that—maybe eating it, I don’t know. The scientist—Zola—almost didn’t seem to really trust himself that he knew what he was doing, but he was damn scared of Schmidt, I’ll tell you that much.” Bucky paused, recalling Zola’s sick smile across the factory when he saw Bucky walking upright. “So...I was wondering. How does it work that the light can make people completely vanish?”

“Sergeant, I got no idea. No idea where it comes from, how it does what it does, what it even is. For all I know, it’s just...sending them to a beach in Cuba.” It surprised him when Howard’s face softened with kindness and he sat down opposite Bucky. “Are you afraid of the effects from being exposed to it? I understand they did some pretty rough things to you.” 

“It’d help to understand why it does what it does, is all. When we’re in the field.” That was a half-assed deflection and Stark knew it, but he smiled warmly. 

“Makes things vanish or makes them go boom,” Howard commented, pulled his goggles down over his eyes and patted him on the shoulder as he left. 

Which was nothing Bucky didn’t already know. He’d hoped maybe Howard had seen something, anything, when he was fooling around with the particles similar to what Bucky had seen—glimpses of outer space, or maybe some other world where outer space wasn’t all that far out. Things just...slowly disappearing for a few minutes. 

He went into the men’s toilets and leaned up against the cold tile wall, breathing in and out, staring down at his hand. The other night, when he was on watch in Italy, he’d felt the cold that burned like fire creep up his arm, just as he’d first experienced it in Austria when they’d plunged syringes full of blue liquid in his veins. Only this time, a couple of his fingers simply...dissolved in front of his eyes, watery, transparent, wavering in and out. He’d gasped so loudly he’d woken Steve, but it had stopped before Steve found him in the dark, and Bucky’d sat there, panting with terror, telling Steve it was merely a nightmare. 

Today he’d had the headache and caught a glimpse of a dark galactic sky from a room made of gold, and you didn’t have to be Howard Stark to know that something way past the realm of science was happening here. Specifically to him, the only one to survive those experiments.

What had Steve pulled out of that factory in the shape of Bucky Barnes? Maybe he should have left it there.

* * *

Protests to the contrary, Steve could tell he wasn’t fine: his watchful eyes raked over Bucky where they sat in the back of the plane, cataloging every slight deviation from normal, his little grimaces and brow-furrows giving him away. They’d been on only a couple of missions and were still shaking out as a team, but Steve’s judgment was as sharp as ever, and he had seen the way Bucky held himself back, even with his friends from the 107th. How long before Steve’s scrutiny determined he wasn’t fit for duty?

As the CO, Steve couldn’t put all his focus on one man, even if that man had once been the center of his world; Bucky wouldn’t have stood for it, anyway. He resolutely didn’t meet Steve’s eyes for the duration of the flight, paid more attention to his cigarettes and his lighter, and before he knew it, the green light flashed above the door and Steve slapped Dugan’s leg twice, gave him the signal: time to jump. Steve watched as each man hooked up and made their jump, till they were all safely away, and then it was only him and Bucky left. He didn’t need a signal, he was already hitched up and hovering at the edge of the door, had waited for every man to go so he could jump after Steve. “No can do,” Steve yelled over the roar of the engine and wind. “You’re first.” Outside, hundreds of feet below, the flak started; from up here it looked like pretty little fireflies, flittering gaily through the night, till the concussion rocked their plane and it wasn’t so cute anymore.

“You’re still a fuckin’ punk, you know? Someone’s gotta watch your back. Go.” How many times did Bucky have to remind Steve he was too important to take big risks now? But the look on Steve’s face made Bucky grind his teeth in frustration: Steve wanted him to go first because he wasn’t sure he could trust that Bucky was one hundred percent fit. Well, join the club, Bucky wanted to say, but it stung, all the same.

“I’ll be fine,” Steve hollered in a craven attempt to soothe. “When have I missed an objective? I never even jumped before Austria and I found you, didn’t I?” Bucky wasn’t going to buy it—Steve thought he was unfit for duty, he really did.

Before they’d loaded in, Bucky’d run into Colonel Phillips in a corridor, and he’d stopped to look Bucky over, not something a bird colonel was wont to do to an enlisted man. He’d fixed him with a mysterious look and said, “You know, son, I’m from a long line of military men. Back in my pappy’s day, they called it soldier’s heart, and nowadays they call it—”

“Neurosis, yes, sir. Combat fatigue,” Bucky’d said. “It’s not that. Getting better every day, sir.”

Phillips had given him a kind smile, and that somehow made Bucky feel worse than if he’d dressed him down. Things must be pretty dire if even a colonel had seen cause for concern about him. “I wasn’t fair to Captain Rogers before. So I think it behooves me now to be fairer to his men.”

Bucky appreciated his compassion, hoping he’d prove to him—to everyone—that he was more than fit. Prove it to himself, maybe, too.

It would have to start with Steve, though. Bucky threw him a sour glare—he wasn’t certain who was the more faithless here. There hadn’t been a time when he’d let anyone down, yet; their concern was preemptive. “You still ain’t a paratrooper,” Bucky bellowed into the wind that howled through the cabin. 

Steve jerked his head toward the door and Bucky rolled his eyes, but he leaned out and let himself fall forward; Steve followed without waiting as long as he should have. He craned his head back as he plummeted through the darkness, hoping to keep Steve in sight for as long as possible.

His rifle, strapped to his middle, almost snagged him on a tree but it was an otherwise clean jump. They landed close enough that Steve could spot him a few hundred feet away in the moonless dark with his new super X-ray vision, and he threw Bucky a hand signal that everything was okay, as though he assumed Bucky could see him in the dark equally well. Maybe it was a test. There was a lot of walking ahead of them and they fell into step silently, Bucky grimly determined to match pace with Steve.

He was changed enough to do it. It was a question he wanted to ask Steve, ever since he’d watched his hand phase in and out, a shadow play orchestrated by a scientific madman: _What else happened when you came out of that box?_ Maybe Steve hadn’t been burned to a crispy red skeleton, but these experiments bred secrets, and who was to say he wasn’t keeping something equally horrible close to the vest. Did they both come back wrong, in different ways?

It was nearly dawn when they reached the rally point; most of the fellows were straggling in for assembly, and soon the Germans would sweep through the area, grid by grid, searching for anyone who might have jumped from the planes they’d been firing at or sending out planes of their own. Gabe had been listening to their radios—the ones whose codes they’d broken, anyway—as well as their own, so he gave Steve a status update: no Allied planes lost, still waiting on three men.

They couldn’t hold up an entire operation for a few missing men, so they waited till the zero hour and then moved out. Bucky ran plans through his head, over and over like a chant, to keep his mind off of the very real possibility that another event could happen out here and he could get everyone killed. Soldiers were a superstitious bunch, Bucky as much as anyone else, so he reminded himself, every time his thoughts strayed, that thinking about it would only wish it into happening. A few prayers wouldn’t hurt, either.

Their objective looked daunting: the pillboxes were well positioned guarding the mouth of the valley, they would have a hell of a time getting even the Shermans through here if Steve’s group didn’t shut them all down first. But their big advantage was a deep grove of pines where Bucky could be well positioned in a tree, keeping his eye on the US Army’s number one weapon. 

As often as he groused about how different Steve was now, Bucky did admire his newfound confidence and strength: it was a thing of beauty to watch it in operation and when they weren’t in the fray together, when Bucky was far enough back that he could be still, watch, admire Steve in action...well, he fell in love all over again. There was so much that Bucky kept back now, and hell if he didn’t hate hiding things from Steve. Which of his secrets would upset Steve most? Bucky wondered as he picked off a few of the Germans near the communication trenches who’d been hoping to get the drop on Captain America. 

The squad with Steve at its front could have cleared the position fast if not for the column of tanks lined up well behind the bunkers. As soon as the eighty-eights started up, the tanks swung around, and Bucky watched from a distance as one by one the column lit with fire. But Steve kept everyone together, on plan, sticking to the trenches so Bucky could do his job and shoot the ones aboveground.

Just as he’d taken down three soldiers in a row, Bucky felt it: the frozen, burning, creeping numb. _Christ, not now._ He should never have thought about it while they were on the march, he’d jinxed himself. Taking his eye from the scope, he watched his left hand—the fingers rippled like water in a pond, spreading up past his knuckles this time. His entire hand up to the wrist was disappearing; he held it in front of his face and saw only the thinnest outline, like the edge of a glass, and the tree branches right through it, the stock of his rifle. 

Bucky's lungs could make only shallow, fearful gasps, his chest was crushed in a vise, his mouth filled with the taste of lead. He waited to see if the entire arm would disappear, watching it spread past the cuff of his jacket, but it finally stopped just above the wristbone, and he knelt in his perch, panic fraying his nerves as he hyperventilated. 

In the factory he’d done anything he could to refocus his mind during the procedures: recall significant dates, do times tables, recite lines from his favorite pictures. Somehow he’d landed on a poem, The Tyger, and he’d say it over and over because it was the only one he could come up with. He’d tried to remember the author—was it William Blake, or maybe Rudyard Kipling? No, he’d reminded himself, Kipling was Gunga Din, but try as he might he could never recall those lines, so Tyger it was, and would be. Now Bucky breathed, in-out, in-out, lips moving silently: _When the stars threw down their spears, And water’d heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger, Tyger, burning—_

An explosion made him jerk, forcing his attention back on his squad and nearly sending him out of his perch—Steve was nowhere in sight. Nor were any Krauts. How long had he been paralyzed here, staring at his hand? Though he couldn’t see his squad through the smoke, he gradually realized Steve’s voice was crackling over the handheld radio Stark had created for them. Bucky automatically reached for it with his left hand and stopped, turning it back and forth—even as he watched, the hand was rematerializing, and he set his rifle in his lap, right hand pressed over his mouth. “We’re in, we need you down here,” Steve said, the staticky burst not hiding his distress. “They’ve still got those tanks over the hill. Buck, can you hear me?”

“Copy. Got it,” Bucky responded, feigning calm, and squeezed the transmitter, testing his hand. Totally normal. When he climbed down and made his way up the steep hillside, he saw Steve jamming his shield onto his arm, emerging from the smoke like some mythic god born out of smoke and fire. Bucky sucked in a deep breath and said, tapping his musette bag where the radio was, “Thought a patrol was coming looking for the sniper, I had to go silent.” No longer satisfied with sins of omission, he was flat-out lying to Steve. “Or maybe they were just running away from you. I would.”

“Understood,” Steve said, but his pinched face betrayed his skepticism. 

Dum Dum strolled toward them from the first bunker, toting a couple German rifles, a cigar clamped in his teeth. He’d always had a tendency to stuff as many C rations and extra ammo as he could under his vest, but right now he looked like a pregnant woman with his haul from the German positions. He pulled things out—a small wheel of cheese, a salami, canned apricots—and handed them to Bucky. “You look like you could use ’em,” he said with uncharacteristic sensitivity. Dum Dum had helped nurse Bucky through pneumonia in the Kreischberg cells, before Zola had hauled him into the lab. Maybe that’s why the doctor had chosen him.

Steve looked heavenward, but he wasn’t about to bust anyone’s chops for a little raiding, not when it was taking from Nazis. “Well, you’re here now, so come on. We got more work to do,” he said, looking at Bucky with exasperated fondness as a potato masher whizzed overhead and exploded a few feet away, Steve reflexively raising his shield in front of them. He should have given Bucky the cold shoulder for taking so long to show up, but instead Steve reached over and touched his elbow, sliding his hand up Bucky’s arm. “You okay? The patrol didn’t give you any trouble?” 

Shaking his head, Bucky slung his rifle and stuffed his pockets with Dugan’s gifts. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.” He watched as Dugan joined some of the men herding prisoners.

Steve’s eyebrows shot up; he seemed startled, as though maybe he’d misjudged the situation. His hand tightened on Bucky’s arm. “Don’t take chances. I just got you back.”

Shit. All the times he’d longed for Steve to talk to him that way, to touch him, and it had to be now. He watched as Steve got lost in a sea of men, the wave carrying him along. Below them the artillery was making its way up through the valley as the 107th, swollen with fresh replacements, tore through the Germans’ territory, preparing to pound them into oblivion. In a short time, the planes would be lighting those tanks up and turning the forest to toothpicks. Bucky looked at his hand. _Maybe I’ll just evaporate, because I’m not supposed to be here. I would have ended up like all those other experiments._ He caught a last glimpse of Steve’s blue helmet as it disappeared into the concrete dark.

* * *

Sleet pattered on the tent as Bucky stripped the rifle, cleaning everything that required cleaning. The ground under the oilcloth tarp and his bedding was damp and icy, but the way it was cutting into his muscles made him feel somehow safer, grounded in the world here and now. He wasn’t a shade, at least not yet.

“Knock, knock,” Steve said, tapping on the tentpole, pulling the flap back. In the orange light of the lamp he looked like a sunset. He’d brought along more food, a bottle of a sweet white wine. “Where’s Monty?”

“Don’t know. Maybe he didn’t want to sleep with two Yanks practically on top of him.” Bucky reassembled the rifle and laid it next to his blanket. What was he going to do if part of him started vanishing while Steve was in the tent, and Monty as well, if he came back? Once they’d established a field camp, Steve would have a real tent for himself and a table, some chairs, so he could plan, plot courses. But right now, it’d be a lot harder to hide this with Steve almost on top of him.

“What do you mean—like the others are any better?” Steve said.

With a shrug, Bucky said, “They take up less space.”

Steve let out a breathy laugh. His face was dusted with grime yet still he sparkled, a full moon on the river, a summer’s night back home. He yanked his helmet off and the heavy fabric of the uniform top and shoulder piece, his hair falling, boyish and fetching, across his forehead. Though it was near-freezing and their breath hung in crystals in the air he didn’t seem cold; neither was Bucky, really, except for his rear end, and there was another thing that gave him pause: a lot of stuff, like the cold, didn’t get to him the way it once had, and it wasn’t because he was accustomed to it.

The counter-battery was still pounding away out there every once in a while, lulling them into a false sense of rest before reminding them that the Germans were getting a shellacking, the ground shuddering beneath their feet. He’d loved fireworks before, couldn’t get enough of them no matter how loud or dangerous, but if he never heard another explosion in his life it would be too soon.

Steve finished his meal with a little cake or sweet bun or something, licking a spot of icing from his lip. There was a flare of the exquisite ache in his chest Bucky was all too familiar with from years of watching Steve do stuff like that: the first time Bucky had realized he loved Steve _that way_ , he’d done the same damn thing. Mrs. Rogers had been too sick that year for Easter services and dinner, so the Barneses had Steve over. After church the boys helped Ma make hot cross buns, their arms coated in flour as they worked the dough, Steve swiping his white-dusted fingers through his hair when it fell into his eyes. He’d been granted the privilege of testing them when they came out of the oven, warm and steaming, and as he’d licked the icing from his lip, Bucky’s blood had hammered in his ears like those guns outside in the valley. The only thought in his head had been how much he wanted to lick that lip, and Steve had smiled at him then as now, sweetly confused.

“How big was the group that came by you? Think they’re big enough we ought to go looking for them tomorrow?”

What was he worried about? Something was bugging him that he kept harping on the stupid patrol, but Captain Rogers was growing increasingly skilled at keeping a strategic poker face and Bucky couldn’t figure it out. “You mean so they don’t give away our super secret location to the High Command?”

“All right, fine. Stupid question. Just thought it might be expedient to bring them in, see what intelligence we can obtain. I was worried about you. The radio was silent for a while.” Steve unrolled his bedding and lay down, stretching his arms and legs, and turned on his side to gaze up at Bucky—the way he’d been looking at Bucky a lot lately, since they’d made their way out of the Hydra factory. The way you look at the sun on the first warm, sunny day of spring. 

“I was fine. Nothing I couldn’t handle alone.” He cast his eyes toward the slit in the front of the tent: the night sky neither dark nor light, glowing with shades of orange and violet from the artillery and the fires, like the irises in his ma’s little garden that smelled of root beer. Bucky couldn’t stand lying to Steve, but he didn’t know what else to do; Steve would take him out if he knew that somehow Bucky’d come back from that lab wrong, send him off to a job at the rear or just packed up and shipped home, the way you return spoiled merchandise to the shop. The Hydra scientist’s failed experiment—maybe the military would even do to Bucky what they’d threatened Steve with: put him in a cage at Alamogordo.

Steve put a hand on Bucky’s knee and Christ but that hurt. “Hey.”

Bucky swallowed, clenching his left hand, unclenching. “Hey, yourself.”

“I know something’s wrong. Why won’t you talk to me? Is it because I...” Steve could never bring himself to say “changed,” he’d always trail off this way. As though he’d betrayed Bucky by getting the serum. Bucky shook his head. “Then what? I know something’s messed up for you, and I want to help.” He gripped the thigh above Bucky’s knee and tugged, and when met with resistance went for his arm instead, till Bucky gave in and lay down facing him. If Monty came in right now, Bucky would explode. Steve rubbed Bucky’s arm briskly. “You can tell me anything. Always could.”

It was hilarious, this concern coming from Steve “I can get by on my own” Rogers, who’d never met a feeling he couldn’t swallow down. “Don’t know how many times I can say it till you get the message. I’ll be all right. It’ll just take time. Heals all wounds, right?”

Steve’s giant new hand moved up to cup Bucky’s cheek. His hands had always been large for a fella his size, but now they were bear paws. “Colonel Phillips told me you were dead. He didn’t say _missing in action_ —they were already sending letters to the families of the men captured at Azzano that they were dead.” Steve’s voice quavered, something Bucky hadn’t heard in years. He’d gotten so used to never breaking in front of anyone. “So he said he was sorry but that you were dead and I hoped—you might still be alive, but I didn’t have any reason to believe it. I thought I would never get a chance to show you, to tell you...”

The light reflected off Steve’s eyes and Bucky realized they were wet. “And I thought, well, here I am, I’m this now, but you—you were dead. You died.” He inhaled raggedly. “And I just...I just. I felt so goddamn _guilty_ because what else was all this for if not to help people? To be the first of a whole army that could end this fucking thing and I couldn’t even save you. I couldn’t save the most important person. What good was I gonna be if I couldn’t even do that.” He shrugged, gave a weak smile.

“There’s nothing for you to feel guilty about. You pulled me out of that prison, you think you did something wrong because I landed there in the first place? Not a chance, pal. Take it up with Ike or Marshall.” Christ, you’d think Steve was the one who’d _started_ this fucking war. 

And Bucky wasn’t the most important to Steve, not for a while—he had that beautiful Agent Carter on the hook, as he deserved. When they’d been in London over the holidays Bucky’d watched from the sidelines as they mooned over each other, trying to wrap his head around the new order of things. It had been kissing season and there’d been no one for Bucky to kiss at the USO dances or in the pubs singing carols or even when they’d counted down New Year’s Eve. There had only been watching while Steve swept Carter off her feet and she beguiled him.

Steve’s eyes were fixed on Bucky’s. “I was prancing around on a soundstage in Hollywood while your whole division was being slaughtered or captured. You think that’s fair?” His voice cracked; he had all these raw wounds that had yet to scab over on his still-new skin.

“Fair’s got nothing to do with war.” If it did, parts of Bucky wouldn’t be passing in and out as though he were in some sort of...eclipse. “Think you can sleep with all that noise? If you can, you better get some shut-eye now—”

As if Bucky wasn’t even speaking, Steve shoved into his space and pulled Bucky to him, kissing him so abruptly and forcefully their teeth knocked together, and he laughed with nerves at the same time. The waiting breath filling Bucky’s lungs for years released and he closed his eyes. Steve’s experience was small, even when he’d kissed Agent Carter on New Year’s it had only been the corner of her mouth, but he seemed to know what he was on about. It was soft and sweet and filled with an urgency Bucky had never felt in any kiss from anyone.

The skipping record in Bucky’s brain kept pace with his heart’s off-rhythm beat: kiss-kiss-kiss, it stuttered, over and over, like his demented mind wouldn’t believe this was happening and it had forgotten all other words. Steve’s fingers dug into Bucky’s shoulder, keeping him close—they wouldn’t let him disappear.

The record stopped and Bucky pulled back, seeing Steve’s slick red lips with their stupid, self-satisfied grin. Steve tried to draw him in again, but Bucky shook his head—“Monty could come back any minute.”

A rumble of displeasure rose from Steve’s chest. “He’s gettin’ his own tent next time.” 

“Bet your ass he is.” Bucky struggled to look Steve in the eye: it threw him back to seeing Steve that first time in the factory, tall and strong and just familiar enough that he thought it was a dying dream. It was possible all of this was some dying dream, his own Owl Creek Bridge. “What”—and Bucky swallowed back the words and the worry—“what was that?”

“Something I’ve wanted to do for years but didn’t have the guts till I almost lost you.”

This made no sense, it was as lunatic as the world outside this tent. “I thought I was the only one,” Bucky said, and Steve shoved his fingers into Bucky’s hair to grip the back of his head, muttering “screw it” and pulling him in for one more kiss. Ferocious this time, deliciously so, and Bucky let Steve’s hunger sweep him away for a few minutes. 

“Cut it out,” Bucky said, pretending to be emphatic and failing, so Steve simply laughed at him. This wasn’t an ending nor was it a beginning: they were meeting somewhere in the middle, where they’d always been without knowing it till they finally gave in. A new friendship created from surrender. 

“You are not the only one. God dammit, are you not the only one. Half the reason I got into so many scrapes was because I was taking my frustrations out on something else. Sometimes I thought, you know, maybe you were looking at me like I hoped, but then—I’d tell myself I was only imagining it. Go pick a fight.”

In the distance the artillery sounded as though it had stopped, at last; he could still hear small-arms fire, shouting, but the shelling and the plane engines had stopped. Monty would be back any second. “Before—”

“Listen,” Steve said, “we have a new mission tomorrow. This location’s been supplied from upriver, a lot of the places the Germans were dug in at, so we have to head up there and block the route if we can.” He shifted back, just two guys in a three-man tent talking plans. “But it’s gonna be only you and me in a tent from now on.” Promise sparked in his eyes, but something else, too. Something hopelessly hopeful. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, you know.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that out when you jumped out of a plane with no parachute training behind enemy lines to rescue me from a fortress prison.”

That got a shy laugh. “Sometimes I still can’t believe I did that.”

“Me neither,” Bucky declared and thumped Steve on the forehead. 

His lips drew tight together. “Maybe you could talk to me later. I’ll listen.”

“I keep telling you, pal, there’s nothing to talk about.”

Steve rolled his eyes but before he could challenge Bucky’s claim, Monty yanked the tent flap back.

* * *

Bucky woke with a start, his head aching so bad he thought the top of his skull was coming off, lungs seizing as though they were full of muddy, dense fluid. In front of him was some kind of huge—machine, was the only thing he could think of, golden and round, with a sort of telescoping point jutting out at an angle. A bright light shot from its core, straight toward Bucky’s chest, and he jerked sideways but couldn’t dodge it. The spiraling light streaked through the sky, straight into his chest—into _his body_ and then out his back. Some kind of flat beam—no, a pathway?—followed the light, shimmering in rainbow colors, sparkling in the darkness, almost as if it had a life of its own. He clutched his ribs where it had hit him: he was fine, he was absolutely fine except for his head splitting apart and his brains leaking from his ears, and he turned to see the pathway and the light as they spilled from his back, faded out, and rolled on in their journey, as though he’d never stood in their way. As though he didn’t exist at all. The fucking thing had gone right through him.

Steve slowly came awake, mumbling something dreamy and nonsensical, before snapping into consciousness. “Buck, what is it?” he asked, instantly worried when he saw Bucky staring at his hands and glancing frantically behind him. “What happened?”

Steve had been overly fussy the past few days, in between the kisses and revelations in the dark. “Nightmare.”

“The laboratory?”

He nodded, rubbed his temples. If he confessed to seeing things, Steve would have no choice but to send him back to the field hospital, have Bucky evaluated for combat fatigue. If it had been any other man under his command, Steve would have done it already. But that light and that path had been as real as this tent, as his rifle, and he settled his fingers over the barrel to feel its solid coldness. Ground himself in this world, the one he knew.

“Regimental said that this is one of Schmidt’s primary resupply routes, there might even be another factory on the train line. Maybe we might catch that doctor.”

Fine and good, Bucky thought, except the Hydra agents always killed themselves, and Bucky knew the type of man Dr. Zola was: a coward who’d take the cyanide way out. It had taken Bucky two seconds in his presence to know exactly what kind of person the doctor was. If they could just find out what was in those blue particles any other way...

“What color was the serum?” Bucky asked, running a hand through his sweaty hair and digging the tin of aspirin out of his musette bag. He popped some in his mouth and took a long swig from the canteen. The water was stale and metallic.

“I don’t—blue, I think. I was kind of having trouble paying attention.” That was baldly false; Steve didn’t have a photographic memory since the change but it was pretty damn close, and that was mostly because he’d started off with an astounding one before. _Good becomes better, and bad becomes worse,_ Steve had told him Dr. Erskine said. What if the stuff they’d given Bucky meant he was becoming worse, the flip side of Steve’s goodness?

“But you never saw those blue particles before you entered Kreischberg. That what you said?”

“Right. They weren’t the same thing.” He rubbed little circles around Bucky’s back. “Hey. I don’t expect you to forget about it, but if you would talk to me, maybe—maybe it’d help you get over it.”

All Bucky could think was that Hydra would have a very different intent for their experiments than Stark and Erskine did. The doctor had been absolutely gleeful that Bucky’d survived the first few days—no one had before, he’d confided like a proud papa, and even in his delirium, Bucky had wanted to heave all over the doctor’s shoes to show him just what he thought about that. What if the stuff they were working on was designed to nullify the effects of Steve’s serum and the Vita-Ray machine? Their formula could be the exact opposite, destroying whatever made Steve’s work, and guarantee there were no more super-soldiers later on.

“Can you at least tell me what your nightmares are about? Maybe I know something now that can put some of them to rest.” There wouldn’t have been anything up at Regimental that would tell him anything he needed to know: the only thing useful to Bucky was what was in those goddamn particles.

“I appreciate it, but...” and Bucky shook his head. Yet he knew Steve too well—he was a dog with a bone and he’d chew this thing to paste before he’d drop it. “You saw that room—pretty sure you can imagine what they’re about.”

“Yeah.” They’d kissed a little—petted, too—in the past few days, and Steve was looking at him now, hungry and yearning. As captain, Steve had to expect the men could come to him without warning so they’d been cautious since that first kiss, but the night was close here, where they were hidden deep in the forest, and everyone else was asleep besides whoever was on watch. “I guess I just want to fix it for you.”

“Hey, I know. I appreciate it. There’s just nothing to be done. By anyone.” No one could fix what Hydra’d done to him except maybe Zola with more of his blue lights and blue liquids, since he seemed to have invented them. They could force him to find some kind of antidote...

“I refuse to accept that. When we get hold of him, I’m gonna—”

“Can we not talk about him anymore?” Bucky implored and slipped his arm around Steve’s waist. They both smelled rank at this point, wearing the sweat of war, the acrid smoke from the fires and explosives that had seeped into their clothing and their pores; they hadn’t showered in days but to him Steve smelled wonderful, the heat of his skin musk spurring Bucky to nose under his collar and drag his lips over Steve’s neck. He was fussy about shaving every day even on an operation, chunking ice or dumping snow into his helmet so he could make some lather with its melt, and it made Bucky sigh to smell the Barbasol behind his ear.

 _You look like you did then._ Wild in their youth, laughing and nibbling on their pilfered apples, cheeks red from running away from the shop where they’d stolen them. Bucky’s skin burned where he touched Steve’s face.

The blanket slipped down to his waist, quickly followed by Steve’s hand, which crept lower and lower the longer they kissed until it settled, blazing and heavy on the sensitive skin near Bucky’s groin, and he didn’t care about the cold anymore. “I kept telling myself I shouldn’t let you know how much I wanted this,” Steve murmured, mouthing at the pebbled skin beneath Bucky’s collar. “That it would, I don’t know, disturb our friendship and I’d lose you.”

He could only laugh at that, low and loose from down in his chest, because that was exactly what Steve was: a disturbance to the order of things, a snagged thread in the fabric of the universe. A ruckus.

“But then I almost lost you anyways and you seem so...damaged,” and Steve’s hand slid over Bucky’s hardness and _good Christ_ but that was the best thing he’d ever felt. That nugget of fear inside him cracked a little; he was terrified that sex with Steve would make him disappear again—what if his fucking _cock_ disappeared when Steve was working away on it? But he was so hard, harder than he could remember being since he was a filthy kid who thought about sex every waking minute, so he wouldn’t last long anyway. The kisses Steve gave to his lips, his neck, his cheeks were poems written on his skin, and before too long Bucky was spent and panting against Steve’s chest, and they both laughed silently. Somehow he’d pulled the uniform jacket apart, mostly off Steve’s shoulders, his hands under all the layers Steve didn’t even really need because he ran so hot now, like a lathered racehorse.

“Guess I ain’t completely busted,” Bucky said at long last. They’d steamed the tent up something fierce despite the late-January bite seeping in through the flaps, and Steve’s skin was all pink and dewy as Bucky undid the snaps and buttons of his uniform trousers, rucking them down his narrow hips. 

“You don’t have to,” Steve began, and Bucky shut him up with a kiss because there was no selfless abnegation allowed in dark tents in a war zone. 

“I know I don’t have to, did you ever think I _want_ to, you imbecile?” and Steve allowed as to how no, he hadn’t thought of that. “And to think these people trust you with their lives. That you’re our great hope for the success of the war, even.” Steve gasped under Bucky’s hand, his hips arcing upward. This was perfect, divine, he had Steve right where he’d always dreamt of having him. “Who says I’m offering what you gave me, anyway. I got a mouth, don’t I?” and Steve went a little wall-eyed with delighted surprise as Bucky made his way eagerly to his goal.

* * *

“Aw, Christ fucking shit,” Bucky groaned as he watched the entire lower half of his legs disappear beneath him, from the top of the cargo pocket on his trousers to the tips of his boots. “Screaming rat _fuck._ ” He threw himself into the nearest room before he fell down—it appeared to be some kind of control room, with little screens like the televisions they’d seen at the World’s Fair situated above desks covered in buttons and knobs labeled in German. Unfortunately, the room Bucky’d chosen was occupied: the guy sitting at the desk in front of the buttons moved for his sidearm, but there wasn’t a damn lot Bucky could do about that—both his hands were in the process of vanishing as well, and he collapsed in a heap as he shoved the door shut with his shoulder. His entire body burned; he was afraid this time the phasing wouldn’t stop and he’d disappear completely, the freezing-burning was so intense. Or maybe Jerry there would shoot him before he could vanish. One death was as good as another, he supposed.

Fortunately, what was happening to Bucky scared the bejesus out of the fellow and his hand froze near his hip. “Wild, huh?” Bucky said, and though the Hydra soldier clearly spoke no English, he seemed to get the gist, and he tore his stunned gaze away to look in Bucky’s eyes. Neither of them could breathe, both sucking at air, a couple of landed fish, and Bucky thought _use the fear for an advantage_ as he rolled himself behind the left corner of that big control desk. The Kraut was muttering beneath his gasps, _shit_ and _my God_ and _what is he_ , and Bucky nearly busted out in a guffaw, because he wanted to say _Mein Freund, I got no idea_.

This supply depot was a lot less like a depot and more like small town: it was much, much larger than intelligence had led them to believe, not to mention swarming with Hydra rather than regular Heer or even SS, and it had its own train yard and a factory that recalled Kreischberg’s, though without POWs, at least for now. There was no telling how long the vanishing would last, assuming Bucky’s legs and hands returned at all, and it was pretty unlikely someone could find him in an operation this big. On the way to this place Bucky’d suffered two more...attacks, was the only thing he could call them. Each time it happened, a larger portion of himself went transparent. He burned like he was made of acid, and his head pounded, mouth bone-dry; each time he felt wrung-out, exhausted by pain and terror. He’d managed to hide the attacks from Steve, but only just: one had happened at night in their tent and Bucky’d had to turn his face into his shoulder, biting down on himself, terrified Steve would awaken and see.

 _In what distant deeps or skies, Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire?_ The distinct sound of the soldier’s holster unsnapping read like an explosion in here. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Bucky muttered under his breath, and he waited for his death, because he wasn’t certain what else to do. He was going to die in a fucking Hydra dump anyway; Steve had wasted his time. The Hydra guy, however, hadn’t figured out Bucky’s helplessness and wasn’t moving yet; in his shock he didn’t seem to think of sounding the alarm. It wasn’t as though Bucky could check the time, being as his watch wasn’t in this world, but any minute now he wouldn’t need the alarm, the explosives they’d set all over the compound would detonate in a chain reaction. And Bucky would go right up with them, since he couldn’t walk out of here to the rendezvous beyond the train loading bays. 

Bucky poked his head around the edge, almost losing his balance—the Kraut took a tentative step forward, like an inexperienced dancer trying out new moves. _I’m sorry, Steve. They really fucked me over in that factory. You should have just left well enough alone._ It would have been so much easier for Steve to mourn him if they hadn’t become so wrapped up with each other, he could have moved on with Peggy, nice and easy. Carrying the grief from this death would buckle even Steve’s strong new body under its weight. _Guess it’s my turn to feel guilty now._

Maybe Bucky should just let the fella shoot him. It’d be a lot less painful than this...whatever this was. He’d wondered on the way here if the parts of him that vanished were showing up in those places he saw sometimes, with all the gold and the beautiful skies and the path made of light prisms. Did they just get...disembodied hands and feet popping up in their land? Or that beach in Cuba Howard had mentioned—maybe they were all wondering whose extremities were dropping by for a visit. Boy, that’d be a sight to see.

He held his hands out: slowly, inch by inch, they were coming back, as though water was running through his arms and pooling into the outline of his fingers. Then his legs crept back in and he sat there for a second with them splayed out in front, staring in disbelief, till he was sure they were really here and could hold his weight. He stumbled to his feet and grabbed his pistol from the holster and came up ready to shoot. The German was so surprised and petrified that his gun clattered to the ground and he gave a little shriek. Bucky’s eyes flicked to the screen behind the Kraut where some idiots were fighting on the ground level, and Bucky was forced to sigh: that would be _his_ idiot, taking on what looked like a platoon. If Steve didn’t get out of this place quickly, they would both expire here. 

“Show me how to use this,” Bucky said, waving a gun at the control desk and the buttons that said “alarm.” It was time to start the festivities so everyone would get a move on, including his idiot friend. He reached out to push the German toward the controls but the kid recoiled in horror, stumbling backward and knocking his chair to the floor, twisting away from Bucky’s hand as though Bucky were made of fire.

The blood turned frigid in his veins, he was numb again. That had never occurred to him: what if Bucky was actually a contagion himself that might infect another person? No one knew what was in that blue light or where it came from except Zola and the Red Skull, so no one knew if its properties could be spread around. And they’d all seen how the weapons simply obliterated humans, materiel, whole tanks, even parts of buildings. What if they’d turned him into some kind of slow-acting weapon? Maybe they were designing something that quietly, insidiously wiped everyone out. A—a poison, a plague. 

But Steve was okay—and they’d had sexual relations. Steve would tell him if something was wrong with him. _Just like you told him, right?_ Bucky stared at the cringing German. No, there was no way, Steve was the worst liar. He was getting better at keeping a poker face but Bucky had always been able to tell when he was straight-up lying. If strange things were happening to him—stranger than what had already happened—Bucky would know. 

But if Bucky touched Steve when he was phasing out and in, though...he could be Typhoid fucking Mary. _Don’t_ , Bucky told himself. _You got a job to do. You can’t afford what-ifs right now._ The Hydra soldier took Bucky’s pause as an opening and made a grab for his Luger, so Bucky had to fire. He fell backwards across the control table, setting off an alarm, the klaxons screaming. _That’s one way to do it._ It was time to go, anyway.

This time, they were the ones who’d rigged the factory and supply buildings to explode; the place was in chaos, none of the Hydra troops seemed to know what to do and were easy enough targets as Bucky picked his way down to the south end of the building toward the rally point. Soon enough the detonations would begin and he had to get out of here toot sweet, pray that Steve was on his way out, too. A chill voice kept speaking in his ear: _maybe you should just stay, remove the possibility of bringing harm to Steve._ The ground shook beneath his feet as Bucky crossed the floor. There were hundreds of strange Hydra weapons all around him, many of them marked as explosives; once the explosions reached this part of the building he’d be gone in less than a heartbeat. Not even enough time to say Steve’s name. Bucky should have written him a letter or something to be opened upon his death.

He thought now that he was wrong: dying here would be better than a slow, sad vanishing. He could just...stay.

A black-clad body sailed past his head, fast enough to move his hair. Bucky watched the Hydra guard hit the floor with a thud and turned to find Steve, a scowl on his face and his brows drawn together. “That guy could have snapped your neck. He was right on your six o’clock.”

Bucky huffed. “Good thing you were, too, then.” He’d been just about to put the gun down and sit.

As Steve got closer Bucky could see how bloodshot his eyes were: Steve had also had a job to finish first but must have come looking for Bucky, scared that he hadn’t made it out. “Where were you?” he asked, voice breaking. “The fellas said—”

“Things didn’t go smoothly. Only a little behind schedule, is all.” The last thing he needed was for Steve to lose his shit here with the entire depot going up around them. Steve was not expendable. “Come on,” and Bucky grabbed his shield arm, breaking into a run. 

“Are you all right?” Steve picked up the pace, hauling on Bucky till he felt like his feet were leaving the ground and he would launch into flight.

“Oh, go ahead,” Bucky grumbled and Steve grinned at him, swinging him off the ground and tossing him over his shoulder, a couple of jitterbuggers. “I’m fine,” Bucky eked out, the bouncing stealing all his breath and pressing his ribs up into his spine. “Met some—unexpected—oof!—resistance. Hence the alarms.”

Steve barreled through the doorway right before another explosion sent the wall crumbling, and raced toward the train yard where the squad should be waiting. Bucky caught sight of a cluster of Hydra soldiers on their left flank and he yelled at Steve to slow down so he could get a decent shot, slid to the ground and raised his rifle, firing. A few went down, but one was getting a nice open shot of either Bucky’s head or Steve’s perfect backside when a stream of blue light zapped through the air, and the guy—and the rest of the Hydra soldiers—evaporated in an arc of blue lightning. 

Morita was sporting a huge grin on his face, sitting on the back end of a German truck and hefting one of the large Hydra guns. “I’ll be down to get you in a taxi, honey,” he sang.

“How long you been waiting to say that?” Steve asked, tossing Bucky in the back like a sack of potatoes. Jim shrugged as Bucky slapped the side of the truck so whoever was driving could move out, and Dum Dum sang, “I wanna be there when the band starts playing...” They were about to be roasted like hot dogs if they didn’t get out of here soon.

“Quit fooling around,” Steve admonished, to no avail. The sky turned red-orange as they sped away, Jim and Dum Dum serenading. Although there were no prisoners here, they’d been surprised to find such a heavy Hydra presence—and Bucky was glad there hadn’t been enough warning for many to make an escape, unlike the place Steve had rescued him from. This would be a significant, unexpected blow to Schmidt, and maybe to the scientist. Good.

They ditched their truck about five miles out so they wouldn’t get fired upon by Allied troops or planes, even though the valley had fallen silent in their absence, and humped it back. 

“Christ,” Steve whispered when they crested the hill. Spread out before them were the blackened, pitted remains of the German area of operation; hundreds of bodies, some of them American, most not, littered the ground, stretching down to the river in a red scar. The stench made Bucky think of alleys behind restaurants in summer, their garbage cans overflowing, and he saw Steve’s hand go to his mouth, rubbing back and forth. Icy snow had begun falling on the hike and soon the wind with its biting sleet would help scour the unburied, as would the carrion-eaters and the vermin that followed every battle. The men on burial duty were racing the clock—it was futile, but they’d try anyway. There were families waiting at home.

Smoke carried up to the lead sky from charred artillery and vehicles. Watching Steve’s shock-slackened face as he stared at the scene, Bucky realized that this was the first time Steve had seen the aftermath of a large battle. In their short time as a squad they’d performed as an advance team or run guerilla missions: he’d never witnessed the fight after the fight. “Was this what it was like at Azzano, when they captured you?” He turned to Bucky, eyes wide, shoulders down. 

Bucky glanced away, swallowing. “No—or at least, I mean, we didn’t see the end of it, what happened after. We were getting murdered, trying to give as good as we got, but we’d lost contact with the other companies and then—there were those energy weapons, but they were using ’em on the Nazis at first. We didn’t understand what we were looking at, why they went after their own. By the time we figured out they were getting rid of the regular Germans so they could come for us, it was too late.” He blinked into the snow that was trying to settle on his lashes. “Wasn’t till we were in the cells in Austria, talking to all the other fellas, that we figured out those guys were going their own way.”

And then: “But it was like that in Sicily. It was...pretty rugged.” 

Steve turned to him, stricken. For a few seconds he stared at Bucky, so sweet and sad with his empathy, but then he collected himself and faced the squad. “Looks like they’ve got the field camp set up.” They already had the command post and tents set into the hills and the forest that wasn’t kindling. The British regiment that had joined the 107th in their absence was setting up Nissen huts. Almost like civilization. “You guys get some hot chow and find yourselves tents. Hit the showers if they got ’em. We can make our reports after you’ve had some rest.” He glanced pointedly at Bucky: _you most especially._

Bucky was about to protest when Steve cleared his throat. “I’m going to help out those guys,” and he gestured at the men loading up bodies. It was foolish, and work not meant for a captain—especially the Allies’ prize thoroughbred—but Bucky knew he could do no less, this was Steve Rogers, after all. “I mean it, Buck. Give yourself a break.”

Steve thought he was cracking. Maybe he was right. Maybe his body was just practicing for when everything broke off, piece by bloody piece.

He made his way to the CP and found Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter, gave them a short briefing on the mission and told them where Steve was; he expected the colonel to get officious or Carter to flutter her wings, but they both acted as though this was par for the course. Once again Bucky wondered just what Steve had got up to in his time with them: he’d said Phillips hated him, but months under his command had proven that was clearly not the case, and after what the colonel had said to him, Bucky thought maybe he saw Steve in a fatherly way—sons and fathers always chafed at each other. And Peggy Carter...well, she was the first gal Bucky’d ever met who had a handle on who Steve was, what made him tick, and liked him for the guy he was under all the heroics and glamour. His pal could do a lot worse. Though it also made Bucky wonder just how long things could last out here between him and Steve, assuming Bucky didn’t just vaporize out of existence. It’d be safer for Steve if he forgot about stealing moments in a tent with Bucky and put his eyes squarely on Peggy Carter, but when had Steve ever done things the safe, sensible way. Carter said there was mail waiting for them both, so he grabbed it, excited to hear news from home about normal things.

She’d arranged for his and Steve’s quarters together while they’d been gone so they wouldn’t have to deal with it, and Bucky went to the enlisted men’s mess, praying he didn’t have an episode of some kind. He was always hungry now, ever since the laboratory, and the rations were never enough. He ate standing up, bag and rifle still hanging off him.

“Don’t know if there’s any hot water left,” Dugan said when Bucky got to the showers. All the other guys were drying off or getting dressed; the camp was already quieting even though it was still early. “They’re showing a new Rita Hayworth picture, you coming?”

Bucky shook his head. “Too beat.” He felt like he should go, just for the camaraderie-building and to keep them believing he was on the up-and-up. “But if a shower and a cup of joe revive me from the dead, I’ll be there.” Would they react like that Kraut soldier had if they saw parts of him disappear? Or would they just put him down because Zola had made a monster in that lab?

It felt as though years had passed since he’d had a shower, and he stood beneath the weak spray, leaning on the wobbly pole. The trickle of water in the low light reminded him of what his hands and legs had looked like, the rippling motion, the small current. He held his hand up, watching as the water cascaded over it, down his arm, reflecting the orange glow of the naked bulbs at the tent’s peak. 

A noise took him from his thoughts and he looked up to see Steve come in, strip off his Cap uniform, toss it on the ground, and hang an undershirt, trousers, and a towel on a hook. He turned on the shower next to Bucky’s and stepped beneath it, his dog tags glittering on his enormous chest. A few days ago, Bucky’d had his mouth pressed there, right on his sternum, Steve’s beating heart under his lips. “Steve, what are you doing here? You gotta stop hanging around with the enlisted men, the brass is gonna bust your chops.” Bucky shook his head. “You got your own area for showers, your own place to eat.”

“You don’t say.” He threw his hands up. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Bucky rolled his eyes and threw a bar of Lifebuoy at him. Steve caught it mid-air, smirking.

“Shoulda put some ODs on first. I feel like I should burn that uniform and fumigate myself. I’m not sure the smell will ever come off.” They were nowhere near a town where they could hire someone to launder things. “The supply sergeant said he’d try to tackle it.” Ah, he shouldn’t be surprised—everyone wanted to do favors for Captain America. Especially when he was out there with the grunts, doing the dirty work.

As soon as he moved, Bucky realized Steve’s hands were trembling and his eyes were edged in red. _Oh Christ, that’s why he came here._ “Hey,” Bucky said, giving Steve his gentlest smile. “It gets to all of us, the first few times.” But that was the kind of thing he should talk to the other officers about. “Why do you think so many of us drink so much? No one should have to look at that kind of scene.” But here they were.

“I thought it was all the European hooch.” He closed his eyes, sticking his face under the water. “They were just boys, all of them,” he said quietly, staring down at the floor, the water dripping from his chin. 

“So are we,” Bucky said, and reached over to rub his shoulder. “Picked up some mail,” he added, hoping to cheer him a bit. “Letters from all of the girls, Ma and Pop, and they’re addressed to both of us.”

After a while, Steve pulled himself together and faced him. “What were you thinking about when I came in? You seemed lost in another world.” Bucky almost snapped out a laugh. In the pale light and with the water running down his smooth skin, Steve looked otherworldly himself; he’d always been beautiful, but now he was carved out of the finest marble, a sculptor’s masterpiece, and the poise this healthy body gave him made Bucky’s heart tick like a stopwatch. He couldn’t leave this, he didn’t want to leave this. There had to be a way to stop the phasing out.

Bucky turned his shower off and wiped water from his face. “Just how tired I am. I keep tellin’ you, I’ll be fine.”

Steve’s hands balled into fists. “For fuck’s sake, stop. You’re not fine, you’re not gonna be fine if you keep going at this rate. Why can’t you just talk to me? It can’t be because of our ranks.”

“I just—I need time. Some room. Can you please give me some room?” 

His right hand unclenched, lifted to Bucky’s face; he almost leaned into it and then—“Don’t,” Bucky said, flinching away. He wasn’t going to spread this.

Steve blinked water from his lashes. Bucky thought his chest would split open.

“You’re my commanding officer now, I’m your NCO. Agent Carter found a tent for just you and me, somehow, when you should be doubling up with another officer and I should be with the fellas. It’s a blue ticket outta here, even for you, Golden Boy. I know you don’t feel like there’s anyone you know well enough to talk to, but you can’t do this anymore.” The past days had been a dream, and they had to stay that way. It was a convenient excuse, at least, for avoiding physical contact with Steve.

The wounded look quickly turned thunderous. “I know perfectly well what I can and can’t do.” It was a stupid thing to throw in Steve’s face: he’d been very clear from the start with Higher Up that his squad would operate by their own laws, or they wouldn’t operate at all. He’d never met a formality he couldn’t ignore. But the brass agreeing to his terms would only carry so far. Steve stuck his head under the spray and ran the soap over his hair, so Bucky grabbed a towel and dried off, trying not to watch too closely. _Remember this,_ he told himself, _the line, the fold, the crease, remember the arc and swell. His light. You might never have this again._

As he was pulling his trousers on, Steve shut the water off and stood there, gleaming in the low light, slicking his hair back over his head. “And I’m not changing the tent assignments. But if room’s what you need, you’ll get it.” 

He knew Steve well enough to know he was beginning to doubt Bucky’s affections, wondering if everything had been a lie. “I do care for you,” Bucky said firmly. “Enough to care about your career even when you don’t. But I ain’t worth the risk.” He buttoned his trousers and tossed his jacket over his shoulders.

“Yes, you are,” Steve muttered to Bucky’s back as the flimsy wooden door slapped shut behind him.

* * *

He woke shouting, half falling off the cot, his head exploding with agony. “God, oh gaawwd,” Bucky moaned, digging his fingers into his scalp, and Steve was scrambling to his side, knees hitting the wooden planks of the floor hard. 

He was frantic and feeble as he tried to help Bucky sit up. Air raids in London had always been the hardest time for Steve, because he couldn’t do anything about them. All his strength and speed was useless—he was just another man, crouching in the dark with the rattling windowpanes and the plaster sifting down on him, hiding, hoping to survive, helping others. He looked like that now: the same frustrated and belligerent scowl, shaped by fear and despair.

“What is it? How can I help?” Steve pleaded, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s waist. One of the fellas from the next room over, he didn’t know which one, slapped the wall, asking what was going on, and Steve assured them it was all right, just a bad dream. The bullet of pain seemed to ricochet around Bucky’s skull, he felt its echo everywhere. 

Behind Steve’s face Bucky was looking at something that shouldn’t be there: a horse and rider off in the distance, lightning turning the dark sky bright all around them. The horse—he’d never seen anything like that, it was enormous, bigger even than the draft horses that had pulled the ice wagons, and he squinted to try to see the rider. The pain in his head was blinding and he turned from the vision, shutting his eyes, holding his hand out to keep it away. 

“Steve,” Bucky said, and collapsed against him, the throb stealing his breath. _God, please don’t let me vanish now. Tyger, tyger, burning bright..._

They stayed there, shaking in the dark, until Bucky’s trembling subsided and he could catch a breath once more. Steve pushed his hair back, stroking him. When he was satisfied that Bucky could sit on his own, he sat beside him on his flimsy bed.

“I’m not asking now. I’m ordering.”

Ah, he’d wondered when Steve might pull rank. “I’m not right.” The thing they didn’t warn you about was the doubt. In training, they taught you about everything else: fear, despair, anxiety, boredom. Homesickness, anger. But they never told you about the doubt that crippled you in the field and beyond it: Can I make this shot the other guy’s life depends on? Can I lead these men when I’m barely holding myself together? Will I break down when the big battle comes? That sinking sensation of watching yourself turn into another man altogether, and wondering if you would recognize him if you passed him on the street.

Steve’s brows drew together, he looked ready to wind up and give Bucky a royal ass-chewing for not answering the question. 

“They told you what they were putting into you, didn’t they? What Stark’s machine would do if it worked?” Bucky didn’t know if he could do this. It opened too much up to the light. 

“Yeah.” Steve wondered why they were rehashing this again, of course, but he was attempting to be patient—usually Steve’s least successful performance.

“Whatever the fuck they put in me...even Howard can’t hazard a guess about what it is. The machines they used on me ran on those blue energy particles, some of the chemicals they shot into me glowed with ’em, too. He—the scientist—tried a bunch of different things to see what would happen.”

“What are you saying? That the stuff is still in you, it’s making you sick?” Now he switched from frustration to anxiety. “Like radiation sickness.”

Bucky huffed, shook his head. “Worse.” He looked into Steve’s distraught eyes. This was the end of everything—he’d have to leave Steve to fight alone, abandon him. He’d never left him in a fight before. “They made me...wrong. What you brought out of that factory is wrong.”

“Looks pretty right to me.”

Bucky knocked him with his shoulder and Steve gave a watery smile. “I didn’t want to tell you this. I figured I’d just disappear one day and then...” He took Steve’s hand. If he could contaminate him, it was already too late. “Parts of me—it started in my hands, and it’s my legs now, and the last one was almost up to my waist—and I never know when it’ll happen, I can’t find rhyme nor reason and they’re getting longer, more extreme every time—”

“Slow down. Just—slow down, okay? I’m not following. It’s all right.” Steve squeezed his hand, hard enough to hurt, which grounded him a little, and Bucky pulled in a deep breath.

“Parts of me are disappearing—phasing out and then in again. That day in the forest, when you couldn’t get me on the radio—it wasn’t because of a patrol, it was because my hand _disappeared_. And it’s been happening with more frequency, for longer intervals, with larger and larger sections of my body, and I don’t know what to do about it. I can still feel them, as though they’re there, but they aren’t. I can hold my hand up and see right through, like looking through a glass of water.”

He stared, puzzled, trying to piece it together. “You mean—like Claude Rains?”

With a smile, Bucky said, “Yeah. Just like Claude Rains.” But then he remembered the movie. “Well, sorta.”

It was obvious Steve didn’t believe him. Thought he was mental. “Those Hydra weapons make people disappear, right? I asked Howard about it, how the blue stuff works, and he said he didn’t know yet. That no one knows what it even _is_. But I heard the Krauts talking, and Zola, he said it’s not from this world, those were words I knew. And they used it on me and now some of me, more of me all the time, is phasing in and out and pretty soon I think all of me will disappear, just like the people who’ve been blasted with those guns.”

They sat silent for a long time, till Bucky spoke again. “When I blank out, I see things, some place I don’t know, it’s not—here. It’s—there’s space, outer space. Maybe it’s where the blue particles come from. It’s like watching a color picture, like _Wizard of Oz_ or _Trail of the Lonesome Pine_ , I can see it plain as day, as real as anything else. A couple times things have come rushing toward me and I thought I might get killed, only they just—blow right through me, continue on like I was never even there. I started to think maybe...maybe I might infect you. That if I touched you, I could pass it to you and you’d die, too.”

Steve was still quiet, just watching Bucky with caution, but also as though maybe he expected Bucky to be able to turn on the disappearance by will. “Say something,” Bucky pleaded.

 _It’s the doubt that gets you._ For once in his life, Steve was unable to express an opinion. Bucky’d always been the talkative one of the two of them, the conversationalist. Mrs. Rogers had always called him Snicklefritz because he could talk about anything, any time, he was at ease with people and enjoyed their company in a way his friend never had—Steve, though, he had _opinions._ It wasn’t that he didn’t have something to say, himself or avoided people—but it was never merely small talk. Never just empty conversation.

“I don’t...I don’t know what to say.”

“How about that you fuckin’ believe me, for starters.”

“I do believe you! I believe this is what you think is happening—”

“See, I knew it—I knew you’d think this was all in my head, that I’ve been unfit for duty since you pulled me outta that room.”

“I didn’t say that right. I’m sorry, I didn’t say it right and I do believe that something is happening and you’re scared shitless. Christ, Buck, do you think I can’t see how scared you are? It rolls off of you in waves.” Steve cupped the back of his neck and drew him forward, kissed his temple. “I went to Gabe that day after you went blank in prep. He said you were never like this before, that Dum Dum would agree, and he could tell something messed you up in Austria. But the other guys who didn’t know you are confused, and a little worried. Hell, _I’m_ worried and I’ve known you all my life.”

Bucky rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. 

“Do you think it’s possible those things they did to you”—and Steve swallowed, because he had such a hard time talking about what had happened to Bucky—“were intended to make you that way?”

“Not really, no. Because the thing is, the parts of me that are disappearing sure ain’t here. Be pretty useless to send me to some other place.” Not that Hydra might not look upon it as some sort of happy accident, assuming they could control it.

“Yeah. You’re sure you don’t know a pattern of when this’ll happen so you can show me?”

“It’s completely random.”

Steve gripped his shoulders hard, gave him a slight shake. “Listen to me: we’re gonna figure this out. We’ll go to Howard tomorrow—”

“I told you already, Howard’s got no idea how those blue things work. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, does anyone actually listen to me?”

With a roll of his eyes, Steve said, “We’ll talk to Howard and we’ll tell him _exactly_ what’s happening as soon as we can. And I will do everything in my power to see we get our hands on that fucking beady-eyed little doctor and we’ll squeeze that information out of him if I have to pop him like a grape.”

“My hero.”

With a huff, Steve asked, “How close to the times you’ve had those—visions, did something disappear?”

“Like I said, everything’s happening closer together. I guess the last time I saw something it was—not that long, less than a day, before I had an attack.”

“That means soon. You’re gonna stick close to me and we’ll see Howard. You understand?”

“Yeah, Mom. I got it.”

Steve nodded at the pillow on Bucky’s bed. “Now get some shut-eye. That’s another order.”

As if he could sleep. But he nodded, and pulled the scratchy wool blanket up, listening to Steve’s breaths as they grew shorter and deeper, till he began snoring. These days, Steve had a lot of stamina, but he burned so hot and bright that when he hit the bed, he’d be out like you’d flipped the light switch. 

Bucky stared at the ceiling, wondering how the fuck he got here. How he longed for the soft hum of the radio back home, Music Hour playing low, the sounds of a city that were familiar. London still felt so foreign. 

If the colonel gave them a new assignment tomorrow, they were fucked. He couldn’t go out in the field again, not reliably, and he couldn’t put Steve in the position of making excuses for him or hiding it. There was simply no telling how much longer Bucky could even last with this happening, and he was a danger to their entire mission. 

He must have fallen asleep at some point near dawn, because when he woke, Steve was gone. He’d always been an early riser, but now Steve was often up before twilight, doing calisthenics and running around like a fool. The idea that someone would run for recreation was batshit crazy, but the squad indulged him, often saved some of their breakfast for him when he got back.

Bucky shaved and brushed his teeth quickly, grabbed some breakfast leftovers from the canteen, once he got down to the War Rooms. With a roll stuffed in his mouth, he searched the halls to find Steve or Agent Carter or the boys. They’d seen Churchill down here once, moving through the underground labyrinth, his assistants fluttering behind him like moths in his light. It must have been something important enough to bring the mountain to Mohammed in the American part of the complex, and even though Steve was in his service uniform, Churchill recognized him and gave him a quick nod, as Bucky gaped. He was getting used to Steve’s fame, now, though it still sometimes tripped him up that this was his small, wallflower friend.

He found everyone standing around, staring at a map spread across the table in the main room, and they all turned to look at him as he crammed the rest of the roll in. Great, they did have some kind of mission: Steve was wearing his Cap gear, not the service uniform. Bucky closed his eyes.

Steve’s gaze flicked to him and then he returned to the discussion; the colonel barely acknowledged Bucky even though he deserved one of his withering put-downs for being so tardy. 

When he was done, Steve turned to him and said quietly, “Just filling them in on the last couple missions, my recommendations for the next one. No assignment yet—I thought there was, but...” Agent Carter gave him a glance and continued pinning flags on the map. 

At first he thought it was the possibility of getting sent out he was feeling so queasy about, but then he realized the tightness in his chest was accompanied by that familiar freezing-burning sensation in his extremities. _Oh, fuck no. No, not here._

“’Scuse me,” Bucky said abruptly and made for the hallway; he had to find some empty room or closet before he disappeared. The men’s toilets were closest, so he burst through the door. Thank god he didn’t see any feet under the stalls, but he couldn’t make it inside one before he collapsed, right on the floor under the sink—his legs must be there, he could almost feel them, but he couldn’t stand on his own weight. The vanishing went all the way to his waist now, up past the shoulder of each arm; he wasn’t sure his head was there or not, but the fire and the numb ran from his toes to his scalp so he hoped maybe... 

Bucky couldn’t get air, couldn’t see: was he going blind from it, were his eyes gone? No, it was just tears blurring his sight, he realized, and then the door banged open. Steve bent over him, jarred at the sight of him lying helplessly on the floor, then he kicked the door closed as someone else tried to enter. It must not have been one of their squad, because he called out through the door, “Sorry, we just need a minute, the sergeant’s pretty sick.” There was some grumbling but they went away; the Brits were always so well mannered.

“Well, you wanted to see what it looked like,” Bucky said between gasps. “Believe me now?” Wait. “Do I have a head?”

Steve couldn’t seem to find his tongue, he was breathing just as heavily in his shock, but he stared at Bucky and nodded as though he’d lost his mind and for some reason that made Bucky laugh hysterically. Something about seeing that look on Steve’s face made this whole thing approximately ten thousand percent worse, but Jesus, it was funny. “Where do I— How should—” He was waving his hands about, trying to figure out where to put them. “I don’t know how to help you.” Poor guy.

“Don’t touch me. I mean it, Steve, you stupid son of a bitch, don’t you touch me. If you do while it’s happening, it could—”

“Shut up, will you?” Steve barked, but he sat back on his heels and continued to stare at Bucky, the Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat.

“I don’t know how long this’ll last, or if it’ll even stop. Maybe you should—should go find Howard.” That would be something Steve could get behind and shove. This wasn’t an air raid.

“Good idea.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth, then shot up from the floor and stumbled to the door. “Wait,” he said, then hauled on Bucky’s collar, dragging him across the floor so he would fall back against the door as soon as Steve left: Bucky as doorstop. Christ almighty, what was the point of even telling him anything? If he disappeared, too, Bucky refused to be saddled with the responsibility. “Stow it,” Steve said when Bucky opened his mouth to bitch at him, and then slipped out of the room.

Bucky rolled his eyes. What if this chipped-tile floor in a toilet, underground and lightless, was the closest he ever got to home again? A blind, seeking mole slowly swallowed up by the earth, disintegrating. What if he was gone by the time Steve came back, and he’d never said goodbye.

He breathed in and out, in and out, like he had a rifle in his invisible hands. _And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when the heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? _

It seemed like forever, but eventually Steve knocked, pushing the door open slowly as he entered with Howard and Bucky slid along the floor. This was so undignified. Howard lifted his goggles up on his forehead, staring down at Bucky open-mouthed. 

“I don’t know what I expected, but it sure as hell wasn’t this.”

“I said _disappearing_ ,” Steve snapped, and Howard turned his gaze to Steve’s face, confused. 

“Yeah, but that’s not exactly scientific terminology, so I—”

“Focus!” Bucky snarled. 

“Right, right.” Howard nodded. He whipped his lab coat off, kneeling down and putting it over the parts that were visible, and they both looked at where Bucky’s feet were slowly coming back. _Oh, thank god._ Seeing them reappear seemed to startle Howard even more. “Maybe we ought to wait till the rest of you comes back and then take you to the lab. It would arouse less suspicion.” He peppered Bucky with questions as they waited for the rest of him to reappear, Steve’s blue eyes fixed anxiously on Bucky’s the whole time. 

The problem was that Bucky didn’t know the answer to most of the questions—he hadn’t really been capable of tracking the timing, noting all the adjacent symptoms, or making the scientific observations Howard wished for. All Bucky could really tell him was when the first disappearance had happened, how often it occurred now, an estimate of how long the most recent two had lasted. 

“Tell him about the visions,” Steve prodded.

“Wait, there’s visions, too? Boy, you really bought the full package, didn’t you, kid?” At Bucky’s narrow glare, Howard motioned— _what can I say?_ “If you can’t crack wise about it, you’ll go nuts.” He supposed he should be grateful they didn’t think he was nuts quite yet.

Bucky tried his best to fill Stark in on what he’d seen, how real the glimpses of some other place were, but it was like trying to explain combat to the folks back home. Later on, perhaps he could have Steve try to draw it from his descriptions. “Do you think that could be where the blue lights come from?”

Howard glanced between Steve and Bucky. “Might make sense,” was all he would allow. When Howard was satisfied Bucky was himself again, Steve hefted him up. Howard was just about to open the door when Steve said, “Hey, you know... Maybe we should wait till tonight? When it’s just the skeleton crew here, so that no one asks what you’re doing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Howard said, distracted, still staring at Bucky. “That’s a great idea. Tell ’em Barnes had trouble with the local cuisine or something, then you fellas come back here—say, after eight. Unless he starts to evaporate again.”

Steve had work to do, anyway, and Bucky wasn’t about to let him blow it off. He was much too important. “Can he—Steve touched me when it was happening, even though I told him not to. Can he catch this from me?”

Howard looked at him blankly, hadn’t apparently considered that. “No idea.”

“You’re a lot of help.”

“More help than anyone else you know, pal.” Right, best not to piss off the resident genius. Fortunately Howard seemed more concerned than upset, and he patted Bucky’s shoulder. “Just don’t disappear till I get a look at you.”

* * *

Howard was checking things off on a clipboard with great flourishes as Bucky responded to the bombardment of yet more questions. The metal table was cold underneath its thin cotton covering and his rear end was getting numb—Howard kept the labs at a fairly low temperature because he dealt with so many unstable materials, he said. 

Or maybe it was simply that Bucky had been cold since they’d left Sicily, maybe even before that, when they’d left Tunisia. The only times he felt warm now were when his limbs disappeared, and that didn’t seem like much of a tradeoff, if you asked him.

He had done what he’d promised, stuck close to Steve for the rest of the day as he worked on their next assignment. They’d avoided the canteen and slipped out to a pub for dinner, the two of them silent beside each other, thrumming with nerves, the world spinning underneath their feet. Just enough time to fill a friendship, uncertain where it would leave them: he was relearning the ache of missing Steve. Anticipating it.

“And the frequency has increased...would you say exponentially or logarithm—”

“For Chrissake, Stark.” Bucky held his hands out.

“Right, sorry. How often are the events coming now?”

“Like I said, faster and faster. The night before we left Italy I had one, then about thirty-six hours later, once we were home, then Sunday, then yesterday, and today.”

Steve stared at him, wounded and scared. “I didn’t know you had one before we left.”

With a sigh, Bucky reached over and rubbed his fingers across Steve’s knuckles. “It was okay. You were sleeping and I managed to get out of the tent and behind it.”

“You should have told me.” 

“Water under the bridge, my friend,” Howard interjected before they could rehash their argument. It hadn’t taken Howard long to figure out exactly how their friendship had transformed itself, and he had the look of a man who didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of a lovers’ spat. He probably got plenty of those on his own. “You should have told _me_ , anyway, that day you popped in here asking about the Hydra weapons. Not that I have any good answers, but it would have given me more time to work on this problem.” He set the clipboard down and pulled a tray over that was covered with what Bucky knew were medical instruments, and the dread rose in Bucky, sour and metallic and hot.

“Just taking a blood sample, checking you over,” Howard said in an attempt to soothe him. “I’m no medical doctor, but I was present at all the tests Cap went through, and I do know how to draw blood.” He tightened a band around Bucky’s arm. “But you gotta calm down, kiddo, your pulse is through the roof.”

 _Tyger, tyger, burning bright—_ Steve’s hand fell heavy his shoulder, his thumb rubbing back and forth. As bad as it might be, it was still better than hell.

“Perhaps you could use some assistance,” Agent Carter said, stepping into the room and smiling at Steve. “I picked up a few things from Dr. Erskine, too.”

Howard’s brows shot up and he glanced at Steve, who was gaping at her. “Agent Carter,” Steve said, and you could see him running through the list of pathetic cover-ups he was trying to concoct, but she stopped him before he could embarrass himself. 

“Shall we dispense with formality, now that we’re all co-conspirators? It’s Peggy.”

Shaking his head, Howard muttered, “Spies,” but he handed her the vial and the tube.

“When did you...” Steve trailed off, not sure what to ask. Oh, he was so besotted with her, and Bucky could only shake his head in amusement.

“When you two scarpered from the meeting. I couldn’t help but try to find out what was happening. Eavesdropping a bit, I’m afraid. I shouldn’t want to put you at risk, any of you, but I’d like to help. It sounds rather dire, from what I could hear.”

As the three of them discussed Bucky’s plight and filled her in on what she’d missed, it helped him ignore the poking and prodding and the fear boiling over inside his chest. Howard looked in his eyes, down his throat, in his ears, just like a regular doctor. Steve had calmed a lot with her presence—Bucky thought he should feel jealous, but instead he was grateful for her influence.

“What do you think—could you see anything?” Bucky asked when they were through talking about him. “Do you have any idea what’s wrong?”

Howard threw his hands in the air. “Pal, I keep telling you, I got no idea. I’m going to run the blood and saliva by Dr. Price—relax, I won’t tell him what it’s about,” Howard said when Steve bristled. “But without any of the equipment here we used for Rebirth and the weird crap that Abe kept in his lab, I’m at a serious disadvantage.”

“So all this is a waste of our time? Bucky could—Bucky could die and we won’t have any idea why or how we could have stopped it?” Steve’s head swiveled back and forth between Howard and Peggy, desperate for something he could hold on to, fight against. God, Bucky hoped Peggy would take care of Steve when he was gone. Love him like he deserved.

“I didn’t say that, Steve,” and Howard’s voice trembled. For the first time Bucky really understood how much the others loved Steve, too. No one else had ever seen Steve the way Bucky had his entire life until here. These people—even the colonel—would do anything for him, and Bucky was the beneficiary of that goodwill. It had taken far too long for the world to catch up to him, but he was grateful for it, knowing Steve would be all right. “I said I have no idea what’s _causing_ it. And until we get our mitts on that grimy little Herr Doctor Zola, or maybe Johann Schmidt himself, we probably won’t know. But I built that damn Vita-Ray machine and we got you from it, the formula wasn’t the only thing that worked on you. Pretty sure I can figure out something that’ll stop this—or at the very least, arrest it till we can get a cure.”

“Oh, brilliant!” Peggy said brightly. “Yes, of course, the particles you used in the Vita-Ray could have similar properties to the particles of blue light. That might be what Zola’s doing with his formula as well, combining it with Schmidt’s altered genetic code, the way the Vita-Rays combined with Erskine’s formula. Perhaps Barnes has simply been carrying around a bastardized formula.”

Howard stood up a little straighter. “Right.” He pointed his finger a couple times at Peggy. “That first time we blew up the lab, we noticed that alpha and beta were in neutral, so if we—”

“The thing is,” Steve broke in, tense and coiled, his eyes trained on Bucky’s, “we don’t have any time. We don’t have your machine and—we’ll get a new assignment any day now and there’s no way Bucky can go back in the field. So this is all academic, isn’t it? Speculate all you want, but it doesn’t do us a damn bit of good, especially if we’re in Italy.” That wasn’t Steve’s first concern, but it was the easiest one for him to talk about. He wiped his hand across his eyes. “You invented the Vita-Ray from scratch, right? To go along with Dr. Erskine’s formula, it was something you created from the ground up?”

“Where are you going with this?” Peggy asked, a little short. They had never been tense with each other after the time she shot at Steve.

“I just want to know if you ever—did you ever think something like this could happen with your own inventions? That you were playing with the laws of nature and the results could be...” Steve waved a hand in Bucky’s direction. _Ah, Steve, forget it. The dealer dealt this hand, we gotta play it._ Bucky wished he could put his head on Steve’s shoulder, wrap his arms around his waist and feel that heartbeat pulse in his throat, warm beneath his lips.

Howard glanced away. Bucky had never seen Howard wary like this, or Peggy. There must be secrets piled upon secrets about Project Rebirth which hadn’t died with Dr. Erskine. “We figured one of two potential things would happen, and either way, they would give us a baseline to work from on the next...test.”

“Go on.” But Steve didn’t look as though he really wanted to hear this; Bucky sure as shit didn’t. Not that that would stop Howard now that Steve had pestered him into it.

“We weren’t sure you would survive. We weren’t _confident_ you’d make it through. But if you did, and you weren’t another Schmidt—you’d just be the first wave, nothing special. One small cog in an army of successful serum and Vita-Ray recipients. Of all the scenarios we imagined, none of them were the doc getting killed with the formula stuck in his head.”

So the only thing they had left in this solution arsenal was a machine that no one had ever been truly confident about working, and that was all the way across the ocean. “Which one did you put odds on?” Steve sounded—dispassionate, maybe. Which Bucky knew meant he was scared. 

Howard leveled a glare; he didn’t want to answer: an answer itself. Peggy said quietly, “Steve, please.”

Eventually, Howard tried to assuage his fears. “We’d never have even discussed odds if we’d known how special you truly were.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Bucky’d had enough. “So you weren’t sure things would work, but you succeeded despite all the doubts. If you can rebuild your machine, or build something else that uses those particles, you think you could slow this down. That’s what you were saying?” It was always left to the sergeants to keep things on track, get everyone lined up.

Howard looked slantwise at Steve, but nodded. “Yeah, but I’ll have to do it under the noses of the people expecting me to deliver new weapons. You might recall there’s a war on and I wasn’t invited solely for my debonair personality.”

Peggy piped up. “We’ll tell them that’s exactly what you’re doing, and I’ll create a cover. In the meantime, I’ll do everything in my power to get useful intelligence on Zola and his movements. We’ll catch him.” She gazed up at Steve. “I’ll also do my damnedest to discourage the colonel from sending you out right away. Even a few more days here might help.”

Bucky jumped off the table, putting his jacket back on. “Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate it, more than you know. If something happens, though, could you—will you not tell my family the truth? Let them think I was killed in action and buried over here.” He pulled his dog tags from his neck and handed them to Peggy. “So these don’t vanish with me.”

She let him close her fingers around them, nodding, her eyes shining. “You’re no longer alone in this. We’ll work something out. We’ll figure it out.”

So that was one team he and Steve had for fighting out in the field, and one team they had here. It wouldn’t do any good, but it was nice to know so many people had his back, even if Steve was their primary interest.

“Check in with me tomorrow,” Howard said, as he and Steve walked out the door. 

Sucking in a ragged, shaky breath, Steve slid his gauntlets on and said, “If they do send us out, I’ll tell them—I can say you contracted an illness in the factory. Something they understand, like malaria, I’ll say the doctor experimented with all kinds of diseases.”

“Sounds good,” Bucky responded, because he wanted Steve to feel as though he was helping, as though he was doing something useful. Jesus, he loved him so much, so much—how was he supposed to leave him? But he buttoned his jacket, walking ahead of Steve, trying to keep his eyes from watering.

“We’ll miss you out there, but we’ll be okay. Maybe we can pull someone in from the SSR or the 107th to round out the team. Not that anyone could fill your shoes.”

Bucky stopped abruptly, looking around the corridor, its red bricks and cobblestones fading to gray in his sight. Numbness crept into his fingers, his wrists. “Steve. Steve?” he whispered, and held his hands up in front of his face as they grew liquid, then transparent. It was happening way too fast, why was it happening so _fast_? His legs were buckling beneath him.

“Stark! Peggy!” Steve bellowed, rushing behind him. 

“Oh my god,” Howard said, speeding toward him. Everything was turning so dark, so gray. “He’s almost gone. When did this start?” Howard’s tone was a little accusatory, and Steve snapped back that it had happened just now.

Bucky looked down: most of him was fading away. Could they even see his face, or was that gone, too? It had never come this quickly on the heels of another attack, it wasn’t even ten hours yet. Had they triggered something in Howard’s lab? Was there some kind of time bomb in his veins they’d pushed the timer on? “Steve—what—it’s so dark in here—” Though Steve’s hand was on his back, he was falling.

“This is not gonna happen,” Steve yelled. “You are not going anywhere!” He surged against Bucky, clutching him around the waist. “You hear me, Sergeant? You’re not leaving me. That’s an order. Don’t go. _You can’t go._ ” And Bucky laughed under his sob because that was the most Steve thing he’d ever heard and who was Bucky to disobey a command from his superior officer?

But it was too late. He was the trail of a shooting star, bright matter disintegrating into dark, cold fire. Had he ever really been here at all? They’d blink and try to recall why they were standing around here with one another, wonder what they’d intended to do. Bucky held his arms up as Steve gripped him tightly, pulling Bucky to his chest, and he stared at their absence. _Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?_ His lungs were so tight they might burst, his legs felt like jelly. But Steve wasn’t letting go.

He was going. He was gone. “Please, please,” Steve pleaded, and Bucky didn’t know who he was directing it to. _On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?_ Steve’s hands, not mine, Bucky thought. This was what Steve was made for, wasn’t it? They hadn’t thought he’d even survive the procedure, but look at him now. This couldn’t spread to him, it couldn’t. Bucky might be a contagion. “I won’t let you go, Buck. I won’t. You stay here with me, that’s an order.”

“Hey, Steve, it’ll be...” He inhaled, or tried to. It felt so strange, he was floating away.

Against Bucky’s ear Steve whispered “no” over and over, swaying with him, squeezing so tight as Bucky disappeared from under his grasp. “You can’t leave me.”

From far away Bucky could hear Howard and Peggy’s voices. They would take care of Steve, they would be there for him, Bucky was so glad of that. “Steve, look. Look!” Peggy was emphatic, excited. Bucky reached back so he could put what had once been his hand on Steve’s arm, just hold on to him one last time, even if he couldn’t feel it. 

“Rogers, don’t let go!” Howard insisted, and Bucky could see him through the gray fog as he strode toward them, holding some kind of box out and circling it around. “He’s coming back. Rogers, I think he’s coming back.”

It was just smoke, blowing toward them when the wind changed. Like the smoke on the field after battle, souls carried in its ash. He’d be gone in the next gust.

“Yes, Barnes, hold on. Oh, please hold on!” Peggy cried.

At least the last thing in this world he’d feel was Steve: he missed the little guy he’d fallen in love with so long ago, sometimes, but seeing him so strong and tall and powerful gave Bucky strength, too. There were plenty of worse ways to go, he knew that. Here he was loved.

Steve was so solid and warm against him, his breath hot in his ear. He could feel every pounding beat of his heart, the creaking leather on his wrist. But...he shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have felt Steve at all, and Steve’s arms should be slipping through nothing. Bucky looked down at his hand upon Steve’s gloved arm: it was visible, so was his chest beneath Steve’s arms where they held him. Where Steve touched him, he was coming back.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Steve said, his mouth pressed to Bucky’s temple. When he tried to grip Steve’s fingers, they felt solid now.

Peggy and Howard threw themselves forward and as a group they all crumpled to the ground, a pile of relieved laughter and tears and thundering hearts. Bucky stared stupidly at his feet, turned his hands back and forth. He was still here. “I thought you were a goner this time,” Steve said, voice quivering.

“So did I. So fucking did I. Holy shit. I’m present and accounted for,” Bucky said weakly. “All of me,” and then he laughed, high and maybe just a little hysterically, because he’d known he was a goner. He couldn’t figure out how the hell he _wasn’t_.

“Jesus, kid, you scared the pants offa me,” Howard said, and Peggy threw her arms around Bucky and Steve’s necks, saying, “Thank god.”

They sat that way for a few minutes, petting and patting each other in their disbelief, attempting to pull themselves together as Howard poked at Bucky and checked his strange instruments. “Good fucking Christ. How did that happen?” Steve asked Howard, hoping for a scientific answer.

Howard merely shrugged and said, “The power of love? Beats me, pal o’ mine. I don’t know—maybe your particles are different than Barnes’s particles?”

“Reversed polarity?” Bucky asked, still trying to regain his breath.

“Magnets,” Peggy suggested. “As when you hold two magnets against each other and they repel one another? Perhaps these join together instead.”

“That’s not bad. Well. We’ve got some figuring out to do. With any luck, if it happens again, the Rogers embrace will stop it.” Howard seemed quite amused by the thought, perhaps he wondered if Steve had an unexpected super power he could harness and make use of. Somehow Bucky thought Steve had a lot of blood tests in his future. They both did. “Though, you know, maybe we shouldn’t count on that.”

“Will it happen again?” Bucky asked, his voice more plaintive than he would prefer, but he’d really thought he was dying this time. 

“You people keep asking me questions I’m in no position to answer. But I feel like maybe we have some time now. We can get in front of this thing.” He rubbed his forehead. “You boys—and lady—go get some sleep. Are you tired? You ought to be.” They’d just done something scientifically impossible, Howard’s face seemed to say.

Exhausted beyond the telling of it, Bucky thought, and Steve was positively done in; he was far paler than usual, shaking still. But Bucky was also scared to go back to their rooms. Scared of everything now. What if they needed help again?

They all stumbled to their feet, Bucky offering his hand to Peggy to pull her up. Howard and Peggy watched them as Steve slung an arm over Bucky’s shoulders and they headed back to their rooms on shaky legs.

When they were at street level, Bucky stared up at the sky. Growing up in the city, he’d never really known what darkness was truly like till they were out on the ocean in the troop ship, or out in the field. With the blackout here in London it was almost the same, you could see everything in the sky and he wondered if any of those planets or stars twinkling up there belonged to the place he’d seen in the visions.

Bucky smiled at Steve, whose fierceness still held him tight, safe in this world, at least for now. They were exhausted but he didn’t want to sleep, only to look at Steve, the purest light in his dark.

* * *

They were sent back out a mere two days later, but they weren’t too worried when they got the orders, because Bucky remained stubbornly solid the whole time. With the increased frequency of attacks before that, Bucky should have had either a vision or a fade-out episode less than ten hours later. You couldn’t even call it cautiously optimistic, but it was hopeful enough that Bucky convinced Steve and Peggy not to lie or cover for him.

In the first few weeks he’d waited, primed like a too-taut bow, constantly holding back breath the way he did in that moment before a shot, with his finger hovering over the trigger, standing by for the sign. Steve hadn’t fared much better, often jumpy and distracted, focused too intently on Bucky to the detriment of the other men. When they’d been heading to the operation, a primal terror keeping him company in the plane, Bucky stared at his hands almost constantly: he might still disappear in the middle of a jump or a fight, vanish where Steve couldn’t reach him in time, and it ate at his confidence. 

But then, without realizing it, Bucky had stopped worrying quite so much. Howard had no more idea now what had happened than he had that night, but the Vita-Ray machine, along with a lot of technological equipment and what was left of Dr. Erskine’s lab, was on a cruiser bound for Liverpool. It might help, it might not.

Maybe it was the particles, or magnets, or polarities. As it took up less and less space in his mind, he found himself caring less and less—the war was misery enough. Peggy kept her first priority on the intelligence they needed to defeat Hydra, but she still did what she could for them: as soon as they captured one of Schmidt’s inner circle alive they might get a bead on Zola and then they’d have answers, regardless. Howard could do a lot with that. 

Spring was desperately trying to arrive, little snowbells poking up from the grass and patches of bluebells dotting the fields, when Bucky realized he’d gone a couple days without fretting at all that the phasing might begin again. He was sitting by a riverbank, watching the fellas horsing around in the evening twilight, where light and shadows met. Holding his hand up, Bucky laughed to himself: no more shadow himself, no more shade, he was form and substance. He’d had no more visions, though his dreams were vivid and pretty wild sometimes.

“You’re still here,” Steve said as he slid behind Bucky, clutching him around the middle, pressing his mouth under Bucky’s jacket collar. He had to check every so often, and it made Bucky grin each time.

“That I am. You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.”

“The cross I have to bear.” Steve released him, came over to sit down, cutting an apple with his knife. Only Steve would find someone to give him apples out here at this time of year, and he handed Bucky a slice, pointing toward the villa far up the hill. “We get to go home after the next mission.” He’d never thought to miss London, but he did.

Once in a while Bucky caught Steve staring at him with that same baleful look he’d had the first time he saw parts of Bucky vanish, but he no longer needed to beg Bucky to tell him he was all right. When they needed to, they talked. Bucky trusted Steve to know that he loved him. “Where we headed?”

“A couple regiments are pushing north, but we’ll be blowing up a few train bridges for them first.”

“Fun.” 

“Yeah. It’ll be a blast.”

Bucky groaned. He smiled at Steve, so handsome in the pink and silver light. Honestly, as fighting went, this was better than he’d ever had it: Steve was with him, they were their own squad, everyone believed the war was on the downswing. He was making peace with what had happened to him, what might still. Everything else could be figured out later: for Bucky, at least, the shadows no longer owned him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, feedback would be adored, or please consider reblogging the [master post here](http://teatotally.tumblr.com/post/174121858095/lucida-obscura-20234-words-by-gwyneth-rhys) on tumblr or chiyume's [art from the post here](https://chiyume-arts.tumblr.com/post/174122333280/lucida-obscura-by-chiyume-arts-gwyneth-rhys-on).
> 
> I have a kind of headcanon epilogue to this that sort of takes the sting out of what we know happens in CA:TFA. ~~I could write it here in the notes if anyone's interested.~~ Here's my little headcanon [on tumblr.](http://teatotally.tumblr.com/post/174171191585/since-it-seems-like-this-is-the-only-thing-anyone)
> 
> Thanks to sineala for the Latin help, and minim calibre for beta.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] Lucida, Obscura](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17265875) by [lightupstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightupstars/pseuds/lightupstars)




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